Forum:Memory Alpha licence update discussion
__TOC__ Introduction About two years ago, MA/en began a discussion on the feasibility of upgrading the CC-By-NC license from 2.5 up to 4.0. I would like to propose that we upgrade to the new license as of 1 November 2015 1 December 2015. See the Creative Commons "what's new" section. The steps we would take to upgrade would include the following: * Update with the CC-by-NC 4.0 license text (also to be found at . * Update MediaWiki:Copyright to indicate 4.0 license use. ** Inform Wikia of such a change too, as it will require a change to their Licensing policy. * Add the template to the page to indicate our timeline of licenses. ** This could also be potentially added to at the top if desired. ** Note that I would like to continue to simplify the language used in so that it is simple to read and clear. This is more of a long term goal. * Files uploaded under CC-by-SA must choose a specific version of the license. There are files with 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, and now the option for 4.0 has been made available on the template. ** Note that all items clearly released under prior licenses (such as CC-by-SA 2.5) have been indicated with that license directly. -- sulfur (talk) 16:20, October 2, 2015 (UTC) International notifications BG • CA • CS • DE • EO • ES • FR • IT • JA • NL • PL • PT • RO • RU • SR • SV • ZH Votes * Support. -- Renegade54 (talk) 17:19, October 2, 2015 (UTC) * Support. - 08:56, November 29, 2015 (UTC) Discussion I would still rather have this happen January 1, 2016. - 16:14, October 3, 2015 (UTC) :Why that date in particular? -- sulfur (talk) 18:40, October 3, 2015 (UTC) Calendar rollover mostly. It's simply easier to say all edits starting in 2016 are CC-BY-NC 4.0. This also leaves enough time to notify the community properly since wikia "improved" the site notice. I would like to have at least a month with notices on the main page, recent changes, etc. instead of a little blue box you can only see on certain platforms that tells you nothing. We can also involve the other languages so MA as a whole can upgrade at the same time. - 19:22, October 3, 2015 (UTC) ::I don't really care what date, per se... but I really don't think most people give a rip about what version of the license we're using. I'd guess 99.99% of the contributors won't even bother reading the 4.0 license, much less compare the two. -- Renegade54 (talk) 00:11, October 4, 2015 (UTC) :::Since links to this discussion have gone up, does that mean the change will happen 1 November now? From the unfinished state of this discussion it's not all that clear... -- Capricorn (talk) 18:54, October 25, 2015 (UTC) :I'm still leaning to November 1, since it's a pretty seamless changeover to be honest -- unless there are some serious reasons why we shouldn't. If some delay-type reason comes up, I'm happy to delay the date somewhat, but I'd like a good reason for such (and simply saying "anything in 2016 onward is 4.x) isn't really that (in my opinion). -- sulfur (talk) 21:47, October 25, 2015 (UTC) Less than seven days notice is not enough time for people to know this is even happening; since you can't feature or delete an article in that time, you shouldn't be able to change the entire sites copyright either. What is the rush by the way? What is there to be gained by this happening on that date in particular and not two months later? I don't see any "good" reason that this has to happen at all in that case, let alone right now. If you want a "good" reason though, maybe this will qualify: Has any effort been made to involve the other language versions? If we change to 4 and they stay at 2.5, they would have to add notes on the difference in the version of the copyright if they use any of our material going forward, and all the different language versions of the copyright pages would need to note that not all language versions of MA use the same version of the CC license too. A good number of them should already note that their articles are translated from MA/en and some of that content is under different versions and licenses, but they don't, and that should be addressed too. Every language should be brought in on this and all of MA should upgrade at the same time, or at least the ones who do want to upgade. This isn't about the difference between and NCC-63549-Typ, this is the about those two pages being able to use content between them without a bunch of legally required notices. The way I see it, even if I'm the only person who gives a damn about this, we still have a responsibility to the community as a whole to not just inform them we intend to make a change, but to give them enough time to have their own discussions about this. It's simply easier in the long run to take the time to do this right rather than find a fix after there's a problem. - 22:59, October 25, 2015 (UTC) :See? That's a better reason. My only worry here is that this has been sitting on the discussion list in one form or another for TWO years now. And nothing's really gotten done. :I'm going to post on the various other MA versions today pointing to this license update and making a note of possible ramifications for their stuff. -- sulfur (talk) 15:00, October 26, 2015 (UTC) :I've posted something about this on every other language MA version. Note that almost all are "dead and quiet" at the moment, so we can "force" though a license update on those ones if needed. -- sulfur (talk) 19:31, October 26, 2015 (UTC) ::We still don't have admin access to most of those "dormant" language versions... not to mention the ability to edit the MediaWiki text. -- Renegade54 (talk) 17:03, October 27, 2015 (UTC) So long as we've made a reasonable effort to contact the other languages I'm OK with "forcing" the update through site wide. This might be a good time to have sulfur replace Cid as the "token" bureaucrat on the other languages too, as we should have someone "active" who can make new admins without going through wikia. I would be in favor of having all admins have sysop powers on all the language versions instead of just their native language, so there would be a number of people who could respond to things instead of a handful, and it would make the admin list easier to maintain, but I'm not sure if the other languages would go for it. - 21:15, October 29, 2015 (UTC) :With respect to the date -- I've changed it to 1 December. That gives an extra 4 weeks for a distinct lack of response. :With respect to the other language bureaucrat thing, we started a process with Wikia to have an MA/en admin become an admin on other language variants so as to ensure that we can do fixes/updates to technical stuff/etc. I'll have to double-check on what the status of that is. :I'm with you on being fairly certain that the other languages wouldn't be so fond of a bunch of admins from other languages suddenly being admins on their version (especially MA/de! ;) ). -- sulfur (talk) 13:17, November 6, 2015 (UTC) That's kinda what I thought about the site-wide admin thing, but I figured it was worth broching, or at least doing here as an example. It's not like we lose anything by discussing it. I know you're pretty gung ho about this, but I think we all know this is going to happen this time, so why not wait for the date that works well with my particular brand of crazy? ;p - 04:55, November 7, 2015 (UTC) :Because I don't want to be worrying about switchover crap on NYE. :) -- sulfur (talk) 13:21, November 7, 2015 (UTC) We could simply add the info about the switch before NYE and then just simplify it afterward. We need admin access to the other languages before switching either way, so they all change at the same time. - 19:11, November 7, 2015 (UTC) :We've got the other stuff covered. At the moment by me... which means I don't want to be doing it all over NYE. ;) -- sulfur (talk) 19:58, November 7, 2015 (UTC) Dec 1 Update As of 10:30am today (it took me a bit longer than I'd hoped in the end), all of the MA family listed above other than MA/de are now running under the CC-by-NC 4.0 license. All but two have a copy of the license hosted locally (cs and zh), the Mediawiki:Copyright has been updated on all of those versions to point internally (when possible) or to the CC site otherwise. There are some issues with incorrect footers or licenses showing on a few of the versions, and I'm contacting Wikia about those today in an attempt to get them corrected/resolved. Note: Currently MA/de is running under CC-by-NC 2.0. -- sulfur (talk) 15:39, December 1, 2015 (UTC) :The mediawiki copyright page should always point to an internal location, even if it doesn't point to a page in the same language. :MA/de "seemed" like it was on board at one point, so further clairfcation there might help either way. Google has somehow gotten worse at translating to and from German, so we should see if German speaking/reading users here, or English speaking/reading users there, could help. At the very least, a note has to be added to their copyright page about the difference and that using content from other versions of MA should be discouraged, if not prohibited. This is assuming a note like that hasn't already been added. - 06:52, December 2, 2015 (UTC) My plan is to add in the license internally to the last two versions and then update the Copyright page to suit on both of those to point to it. A number of them have the "shortened version", but in their own language, which I'm fine with, as it points to the full legal version as well. -- sulfur (talk) 10:46, December 2, 2015 (UTC) ::By the way, congratulations on finaly pulling this off :) -- Capricorn (talk) 13:57, December 3, 2015 (UTC) The last two versions now have internal versions of the license (the human readable version, since it's in their language). -- sulfur (talk) 14:49, December 3, 2015 (UTC) May 2016 Update I was informed last week that MA/de is now on board. They'll be transitioning on Jun 1/16. -- sulfur (talk) 18:17, May 19, 2016 (UTC)